As a sort of answer to that, though, the series' previous installments have been popular because they get huge groups of players rocking with no barrier to entry. The guitar's five buttons fit on one hand. The drums, at their easiest, pretty much boil down to tapping fingers on a desk. The microphone nudges bad singers with a real-time pitch meter. Though the difficulty rises later, each part takes just minutes to get used to at first, and the song parts play out simply on the screen.

The same can't be said for Rock Band 3, released this week. Its newest, most realistic additions include a 25-button keyboard and a 102-button guitar (yes, one hundred and two). They make up the biggest change to the genre since Guitar Hero's debut five years ago, and they arrive just as fake-rock fatigue sets in—see the critical thrashing Guitar Hero 5 (made by a different developer) took last month for being too staid and formulaic. Do new instruments serve as RB's fountain of youth?

Funny thing: Rock Band 3 neatly dodges the question. Unlike its predecessor, here are two video games combined into one: a five-years-old formula buffed to its sleekest shine ever, and a brutal, head-first dive into real musicianship. Each half serves as the other's perfect foil.

I'll assume you're familiar with the basic RB concept—grab an instrument, pick a famous pop song, play along to colored notes on the screen, repeat. So I'll start with the game's more realistic half, if only to get the "pro" modes' price tags out of the way. Shake that piggy bank: $80 for the new keyboard, $40 for a set of plastic drum cymbals, and $150 for the button-crazy "Mustang" guitar.

No, they're not required to play, and that price covers some solid build quality, at least. The keyboard has a comfortable heft, and its keys are large and responsive. The cymbals attach to a Rock Band drum kit and take a good drumstick beating with pleasant bounce-back (though I had to secure one of mine with wadded paper towels). And for a toy guitar, the Mustang sure feels legit. It's a little bigger than a 3 / 4-sized guitar, split between plastic strings over the bridge and string-thin buttons along the neck, one for each fret. Pushing down on those buttons has the same give as a low-tension guitar string, and sliding fingers up and down the frets feels fluid.

But are they fun in the game? That's almost beside the point. Like the real instruments they emulate so well, the guitar and keyboard require patient practice to nail even the simplest songs. The game's interface drives this point home. With pro keyboards, not all the keys fit on the screen, so a grid shifts between low and high keys as songs go along; you'll need to know your ivories to keep up. And pro guitar sends sideways tablature at the player at high speeds, represented by bumps that look like the following:

MTV Games

MTV Games

Oy. That's a lot of information to parse from a bumpy line at rapid speed; you can't sight-read a full song like the old games allowed. Pro keyboards and guitar don't have that pick-up-and-rock appeal for party play, unless you slide the difficulty to the point where you only tap an eighth of the notes, which, quite frankly, is boring. (Worth noting, the pro drum attachments are an exception and, in my opinion, make fake-drumming easier.)

The "pro" additions haven't been advertised as party-friendly. Of course they take practice. They're just like the real thing! But Rock Band 3's attempts at training new players fall short. The rudimentary "play along" exercises come with text that was written by a musical savant, and I had trouble keeping up with which strings and keys meant which notes, or which way the text wanted me to place my hands. The result seems like a lose-lose: the game's a little too vague for novices, while the obvious audience of intermediate musicians may scoff when they already own real instruments.

I can see the target demographic angrily disagreeing. I can see a lonely pre-teen learning to play real songs with the game's toolset. Slow down David Bowie's "Space Oddity" to half speed, and you can play each section over and over until the game says you have it just right. I would've loved to see the robust keyboard and pro guitar matched with better training tools, especially considering their high cost, but what's here works. After some practice, I made sense of the interface, and my guitar-playing pals picked up on it quite quickly. Non-gamers remarked that it undid their hatred of the candy-colored Guitar Hero controller.

The rest of the game, meanwhile, delivers the finest fake-rock yet. The interface has been tweaked for faster loads and simpler instrument swaps—good for a huge group. Challenges now work all of the time, so players don't have to load a cumbersome "career" mode to, say, work on their "sing every song" goal. Even the little tweaks are impressive. Your in-game characters hang around in menus and overflow with personality. If you hit "pause," the game now rewinds songs a tiny bit so that nobody messes up upon returning. And simplified, 5-button keyboard parts can be played with the old guitar controller after reaching an in-game milestone. (I may have just saved you $80. You're welcome.)

Call me biased, but with keyboards are in the mix, the songs are just plain better. Flaming Lips, Elton John, B-52s, Spacehog, Blondie, and Echo and the Bunnymen are among the many synth- and piano-loving acts to stave off the crappier alternative/metal fare that gluts fake-rock games, and, by golly, their songs rock to play along to. (I was shocked when I enjoyed my parts in Huey Lewis and Doors songs... there goes my cred.)

But the biggest rush here is support for seven players at once: guitar, bass, keyboards, drums, and three singers sharing lead and harmony vocals (a feature introduced in last year's vocal-loaded Beatles Rock Band). I filled my living room to the brim, warmed my friends up with a half hour of play, and then loaded Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody." The song, as expected, exploded once the choir section sang "for meeeeeee!"

I have my complaints: the aforementioned "pro" training quibbles, the lack of online versus modes, and some very boring keyboard songs (your on-screen avatar comes equipped with a lot of time-killing dance moves for a reason). But they're moot. Because of how the game scales, putting novices side-by-side with meticulous guitar-part memorizers, and because of the 2,000-song selection on Rock Band's online store, and because of the years-in-the-making tweaks that make the game so speedy to load and play, it's hard to think of a better music game, or a better 7-person party game, or a better response to those doubters who say, "Why not buy real instruments?". With this much content, Rock Band 3is a real instrument.

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Should you drink more coffee? Should you take melatonin? Can you train yourself to need less sleep? A physician’s guide to sleep in a stressful age.

During residency, Iworked hospital shifts that could last 36 hours, without sleep, often without breaks of more than a few minutes. Even writing this now, it sounds to me like I’m bragging or laying claim to some fortitude of character. I can’t think of another type of self-injury that might be similarly lauded, except maybe binge drinking. Technically the shifts were 30 hours, the mandatory limit imposed by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, but we stayed longer because people kept getting sick. Being a doctor is supposed to be about putting other people’s needs before your own. Our job was to power through.

The shifts usually felt shorter than they were, because they were so hectic. There was always a new patient in the emergency room who needed to be admitted, or a staff member on the eighth floor (which was full of late-stage terminally ill people) who needed me to fill out a death certificate. Sleep deprivation manifested as bouts of anger and despair mixed in with some euphoria, along with other sensations I’ve not had before or since. I remember once sitting with the family of a patient in critical condition, discussing an advance directive—the terms defining what the patient would want done were his heart to stop, which seemed likely to happen at any minute. Would he want to have chest compressions, electrical shocks, a breathing tube? In the middle of this, I had to look straight down at the chart in my lap, because I was laughing. This was the least funny scenario possible. I was experiencing a physical reaction unrelated to anything I knew to be happening in my mind. There is a type of seizure, called a gelastic seizure, during which the seizing person appears to be laughing—but I don’t think that was it. I think it was plain old delirium. It was mortifying, though no one seemed to notice.

His paranoid style paved the road for Trumpism. Now he fears what’s been unleashed.

Glenn Beck looks like the dad in a Disney movie. He’s earnest, geeky, pink, and slightly bulbous. His idea of salty language is bullcrap.

The atmosphere at Beck’s Mercury Studios, outside Dallas, is similarly soothing, provided you ignore the references to genocide and civilizational collapse. In October, when most commentators considered a Donald Trump presidency a remote possibility, I followed audience members onto the set of The Glenn Beck Program, which airs on Beck’s website, theblaze.com. On the way, we passed through a life-size replica of the Oval Office as it might look if inhabited by a President Beck, complete with a portrait of Ronald Reagan and a large Norman Rockwell print of a Boy Scout.

Why the ingrained expectation that women should desire to become parents is unhealthy

In 2008, Nebraska decriminalized child abandonment. The move was part of a "safe haven" law designed to address increased rates of infanticide in the state. Like other safe-haven laws, parents in Nebraska who felt unprepared to care for their babies could drop them off in a designated location without fear of arrest and prosecution. But legislators made a major logistical error: They failed to implement an age limitation for dropped-off children.

Within just weeks of the law passing, parents started dropping off their kids. But here's the rub: None of them were infants. A couple of months in, 36 children had been left in state hospitals and police stations. Twenty-two of the children were over 13 years old. A 51-year-old grandmother dropped off a 12-year-old boy. One father dropped off his entire family -- nine children from ages one to 17. Others drove from neighboring states to drop off their children once they heard that they could abandon them without repercussion.

Since the end of World War II, the most crucial underpinning of freedom in the world has been the vigor of the advanced liberal democracies and the alliances that bound them together. Through the Cold War, the key multilateral anchors were NATO, the expanding European Union, and the U.S.-Japan security alliance. With the end of the Cold War and the expansion of NATO and the EU to virtually all of Central and Eastern Europe, liberal democracy seemed ascendant and secure as never before in history.

Under the shrewd and relentless assault of a resurgent Russian authoritarian state, all of this has come under strain with a speed and scope that few in the West have fully comprehended, and that puts the future of liberal democracy in the world squarely where Vladimir Putin wants it: in doubt and on the defensive.

The same part of the brain that allows us to step into the shoes of others also helps us restrain ourselves.

You’ve likely seen the video before: a stream of kids, confronted with a single, alluring marshmallow. If they can resist eating it for 15 minutes, they’ll get two. Some do. Others cave almost immediately.

This “Marshmallow Test,” first conducted in the 1960s, perfectly illustrates the ongoing war between impulsivity and self-control. The kids have to tamp down their immediate desires and focus on long-term goals—an ability that correlates with their later health, wealth, and academic success, and that is supposedly controlled by the front part of the brain. But a new study by Alexander Soutschek at the University of Zurich suggests that self-control is also influenced by another brain region—and one that casts this ability in a different light.

“Well, you’re just special. You’re American,” remarked my colleague, smirking from across the coffee table. My other Finnish coworkers, from the school in Helsinki where I teach, nodded in agreement. They had just finished critiquing one of my habits, and they could see that I was on the defensive.

I threw my hands up and snapped, “You’re accusing me of being too friendly? Is that really such a bad thing?”

“Well, when I greet a colleague, I keep track,” she retorted, “so I don’t greet them again during the day!” Another chimed in, “That’s the same for me, too!”

Unbelievable, I thought. According to them, I’m too generous with my hellos.

When I told them I would do my best to greet them just once every day, they told me not to change my ways. They said they understood me. But the thing is, now that I’ve viewed myself from their perspective, I’m not sure I want to remain the same. Change isn’t a bad thing. And since moving to Finland two years ago, I’ve kicked a few bad American habits.

Modern slot machines develop an unbreakable hold on many players—some of whom wind up losing their jobs, their families, and even, as in the case of Scott Stevens, their lives.

On the morning of Monday, August 13, 2012, Scott Stevens loaded a brown hunting bag into his Jeep Grand Cherokee, then went to the master bedroom, where he hugged Stacy, his wife of 23 years. “I love you,” he told her.

Stacy thought that her husband was off to a job interview followed by an appointment with his therapist. Instead, he drove the 22 miles from their home in Steubenville, Ohio, to the Mountaineer Casino, just outside New Cumberland, West Virginia. He used the casino ATM to check his bank-account balance: $13,400. He walked across the casino floor to his favorite slot machine in the high-limit area: Triple Stars, a three-reel game that cost $10 a spin. Maybe this time it would pay out enough to save him.

A report will be shared with lawmakers before Trump’s inauguration, a top advisor said Friday.

Updated at 2:20 p.m.

President Obama asked intelligence officials to perform a “full review” of election-related hacking this week, and plans will share a report of its findings with lawmakers before he leaves office on January 20, 2017.

Deputy White House Press Secretary Eric Schultz said Friday that the investigation will reach all the way back to 2008, and will examine patterns of “malicious cyber-activity timed to election cycles.” He emphasized that the White House is not questioning the results of the November election.

Asked whether a sweeping investigation could be completed in the time left in Obama’s final term—just six weeks—Schultz replied that intelligence agencies will work quickly, because the preparing the report is “a major priority for the president of the United States.”

A professor of cognitive science argues that the world is nothing like the one we experience through our senses.

As we go about our daily lives, we tend to assume that our perceptions—sights, sounds, textures, tastes—are an accurate portrayal of the real world. Sure, when we stop and think about it—or when we find ourselves fooled by a perceptual illusion—we realize with a jolt that what we perceive is never the world directly, but rather our brain’s best guess at what that world is like, a kind of internal simulation of an external reality. Still, we bank on the fact that our simulation is a reasonably decent one. If it wasn’t, wouldn’t evolution have weeded us out by now? The true reality might be forever beyond our reach, but surely our senses give us at least an inkling of what it’s really like.